Xbox 360 Internet Explorer Plays HTML5 Games…But Not Flash

This morning I work up early to download the new Xbox Live update that includes Internet Explorer. My goal was to try out some of our HTML5 Canvas game experiments to see is they work on the new I.E for the Xbox. To my surprise, they work fairly well. Both 1945 Demo and Atari 2600 Match 3 work with the game pad (the mouse maps well to the analog stick) and include nearly all the sound FX (no mean feat for an HTML5 game).

The main issues seem to be the is the size/scale of the games, and mapping the cursor to stay inside the game area. I spent no time trying to update the games to work inside the 360 I.E. browser, but I’m certain it will not take very long to optimize them for the platform.

Obviously, the games are just demos and need work, but you can see that there might be a bright future for browser-based games on the Xbox…at least in HTML5. The Flash games I tried did not work, and it looks like the player cannot be installed. So much for playing Home Computer Wars on the Xbox. I guess I need to make a version in HTML5.